Even when his daughter starts dating, UFC's Bisping will stay cool

UFC middleweight Michael Bisping at the UFC on Fox 2 open gym workouts in Chicago.

Photograph by: Josh Hedges
, UFC/Zuffa LLC via Getty Images

On Saturday night, Ultimate Fighting Championship returns to network television with UFC on Fox 2 in Chicago, Ill., where in the highly-anticipated co-main event, United Kingdom superstar Michael Bisping meets Chael Sonnen to determine the No. 1 middleweight contender. Taking a break Thursday from his fight preparations, Bisping went 1-on-1 with Postmedia News MMA reporter Dave Deibert, discussing Valentine’s Day, strange fan interactions and being voted the coolest man in the UK ...

POSTMEDIA: You’re a married man and father of three. When your kids are teens and don’t want their geeky dad hanging around, will you pull out the issue of Zoo Magazine in which readers voted you, above Daniel ‘James Bond’ Craig and David Beckham, the coolest guy in the UK?

BISPING:(Laughs) I don’t know about that. I do have the award. It’s floating around in the house somewhere. I tell you what I will do with my daughter, whenever she brings a boy back to the house. I will definitely be sticking on a highlight reel of my fights. ‘If you mess around, that’s going to be you on the receiving end (laughs).’

POSTMEDIA: Which version of The Office is better: the UK version or the American version?

BISPING: Oooh, that’s a tough question. I think they’re quite different. I’d go with the UK version because I’m from the UK but I think Steve Carell does a great job.

POSTMEDIA: You’ve noted that you had some pretty miserable jobs coming up. Tell me the worst of the worst.

BISPING: The slaughterhouse was bad. One of the most disgusting ones, I worked at a sandbagging plant. Six in the morning until six in the evening, with a 30-minute break. It was 50-pound bags of sand coming down the conveyor belt. I’d grab them and put them onto a pallet and just about that time, there’s another one there. Twelve hours of loading sand, all day. And if that wasn’t miserable enough, there were only a few other people working. It was a small place. We had five or fix people, all in their mid-’50s and they’d all worked there for, like, 30 years (laughs). That one was particularly miserable.

POSTMEDIA: Since you moved to California six months ago, what’s something you miss the most that you can only get in the UK?

BISPING: The English sense of humour, I do miss that. Being able to order a kebab to my doorstep late at night, I do miss that. In England, you can order a chicken kebab or a doner kebab to your doorstep late at night. They don’t do that out here. I do miss it although this weight cut, I think, was a lot easier because of that (laughs). Also, the pubs. I miss the pubs of England, going in there, sitting with the guys, having a game of pool and a quiet beer.

POSTMEDIA: How many extra posters did you ask UFC for from the first event for the first poster you were on?

BISPING: I didn’t, actually. The first one I was on was UFC 66. Every time you fight, you have to sign a bunch of posters. You get a (cardboard-mounted) poster signed by all the fighters that competed on the card. I’ve still got all of them. They’re still in England. I’ve got one for every fight I’ve been on. I’m just waiting for somewhere nice, like a gym or something, to hang them all up.

POSTMEDIA: Describe the strangest fan interaction you’ve ever had.

BISPING: A lot of people come up to me with things like ‘Michael Bisping, you’re awesome! Would you kick me in the leg?’ I’m like, ‘OK, I’ll kick you in the leg but it’s going to hurt (laughs).’ The strange one’s always, ‘Oh my God, Michael Bisping. My girlfriend (expletive) loves you. She’s got the biggest crush on you? Would you come take a picture with her?’ I’m always like, ‘Well, that’s bizarre.’ If my girlfriend had a crush on someone, (I wouldn’t do that).

POSTMEDIA: If you can use whatever pull you have in England, what Olympic event would you most like to have front-row seats for at the 2012 Summer Games in London?

BISPING: My brother Konrad is competing, hopefully, in the Paralympics in the shot put and the discus. So I would love to be front-row for his shot put and discus.

POSTMEDIA: In your UFC profile, you joked that you placed 73rd at the World Ninja Games in 1999 only because your smoke bomb skills let you down. If you had better smoke bomb skills, would you have been a top-50 ninja?

BISPING: Most definitely, yeah. I’m sure I could have cracked top-10 ninja.

POSTMEDIA: You were a product of the 1980s growing up, and you started martial arts very young. Which had the better montage: The Karate Kid or Bloodsport?

BISPING: For me, Bloodsport. I loved Bloodsport. Bloodsport and Kickboxer were some of my favourite films. I was a big Jean-Claude Van Damme fan as a kid. That’s kind of what got me in martial arts. Rocky movies, Van Damme, Bruce Lee, all that stuff. I liked The Karate Kid. I remember doing some (expletive) in the playground thinking I was Daniel Larusso but I was more of a Van Damme fan.

POSTMEDIA: Fans are always asking you on Twitter for a retweet. What fellow celebrity would it thrill you the most to get a retweet from?

BISPING: Unfortunately I don’t have any. There is a book called The History of the Bisping Family. There’s a book about my grandfather called Noble Youth. And there’s a book about him when he was escaping the Nazis called Noble Flight. So I don’t have any heirlooms but there’s three books about my grandfather and my family heritage. So that’ll do for me.

POSTMEDIA: Where’s the worse paparazzi: the UK or the U. S.?

BISPING: Definitely the UK. The paparazzi in the UK are a nightmare. I don’t really suffer from them. I’ve been snapped here or there ... But fortunately I’m not the type that’s rolling out of nightclubs, (women) on my arm. I’m a family man. I’ve got three kids.

BISPING: The best present I ever did was, for her birthday I bought her a brand new convertible car. It had a key card. Not a key, an actual key card. I put the car at the end of the street so she wouldn’t see. I put a big pink ribbon around it. I put the key card inside the birthday card and I just tossed her the card. I said, ‘I’m sorry. I forgot to get you a present. I just got you a card. I hope you don’t mind.’ She felt it and said, ‘What’s this inside it? There’s something inside it.’ I said ‘Nothing.’ And she completely ruined it. She said, ‘It isn’t a key card for a car, is it?’ ‘You just completely ruined it! Yes, it is!’ (laughs).

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